My Agumon & Other Stories
by Nathaniel Hawthorne1
Summary: A collection of short stories, depicting five DigiDestined with bones to pick and theories to test. After 7 years, a new story: LOVE
1. Story 1: My Agumon

**My Agumon & Other Stories**

**Story 1: **My Agumon

"What is the difference between animal and Digimon? Because one speaks, does that make it superior? Haven't humans been using this concept to justify themselves all these yeahrs?"

_Slap!_

"What was that?"

"Mosquito."

Even my psychiatrist has a haggard look upon his face. And he has put up with a lot. Mainly my "belief" in Digimon.

"Warner, I'm aware that you want to tell me something, but aren't."

He's at the end of his rope. I can sense it through his words. I decide to milk it. After all, my father paid for this session. Might as well make it last the remaining 45 minutes.

I rub the stubble on my chin (new!), and open my mouth in anticipation of speech. "The twins, Sheldon and Landon, met some 'ladies of the evening.' Ava was infuriated because she thought they were perverts. I, on the other hand, was infuriated because they didn't come and find me, so they ended up losing their virginity and I'm still here, pathetic virgin."

"And being a virgin makes you feel inadequate."

"No. It means I _am _inadequate. I first entered the Digital World when I was 8. That's six yeahrs ago. I had this fantasy of being an adventurer and having sex with a love interest I would gain. I thought we start off yelling at each other, never divulging our inner emotions unless through subtlety, and eventually growing older—which would lead to passionate making love at the age of 13. Fate's screwed me, I guess, 'cause I never got that love interest and I'm already 14."

"Warner, I'm aware of you wanting to tell me something."

Therapists aren't supposed to repeat things. Are they not?

"Something about your past."

Oh. There was more.

"Yeah, well, my past has been a disappointment."

The psychiatrist nodded, hand over mouth. "How does that make you feel?"

"Um… disappointed?"

"Ah, I see."

I give this guy the once-over. "Do you want me to single out an event? Is that what you want?"

"It's not about what _I_ want."

"Would it help me if I did that?"

"Isolate a single event. Please."

They have my friend, Carmel, on therapy, too. He says he never speaks for anything in there. He doesn't believe in therapy. Hell, I don't either, but he's stubborn about it. Carmel sticks to his beliefs, no matter how foolish he may seem to others.

Carmel's parents don't know about Digimon. So they haven't been able to inform his psychiatrist on the subject. They have, however, noted all the mental problems that are the result of going to the Digital World and dealing with near-death experience after near-death experience.

Me? I don't care. I think it's rather funny. Their expressions of confusion and bewilderment as I tell them about sentient creatures materializing between our world of matter and their world of data give me plenty of entertainment to pass the time.

Other times I waste hours in the DigiWorld. The portal sits nestled behind a bush in front of a bright yellow wall in our neighborhood park. Agumon is the key. Any Digimon near it, on either side, causes it to open.

Adults don't seem to catch on to it. Only we kids are innocent enough, imaginative enough, accepting enough, and smart enough.

"Is there something wrong, Warner?" Agumon asks, following me as he and I hiked up a sloping Digi-hill.

A frown is upon my face as I patiently climb. "I went to see my therapist today."

"That's bad?"

"He makes me feel depressed."

"Every time?"

"Every time."

"Why do you go then?"

"My father wants me to."

_Zzzzzzzzzzzzz! _goes the object that flies past me. I keep walking up, undeterred. Agumon, on the other hand, has been startled.

"What was that?" he asks.

"Mosquitomon."

"I wonder what time it is in the Real World."

Agumon looks at my watch, which is on his own wrist. I'd given it to him as a present long ago. It stops working in the DigiWorld, and that seriously affects its accuracy in the Real World.

"It says 5:45."

"Well, didn't it read quarter of 6, fifteen minutes before?"

"That depends. How long is a minute again?"

I chuckle. I twirl. I feel like dancing. My legs bend, and I lower myself to Agumon. My Agumon.

He holds out his arm. His claws reach out. I point to the minute hand on his, what used to be my, watch, and say, "When this completes a full cycle, that's a minute. 60 of these little lines. Means 60 seconds—one minute. It doesn't matter where it begins and where it ends; it could be from 15, around, back to the 15, and that'd be a minute in time. Usually, we consider a 'minute' as continuing between 0. A minute has passed when the number changes on the watch."

"The numbers change?"

"Not the way you're thinking. The way I think you're thinking."

"What am I thinking?"

"That the— Never mind."

We progress over more land. After awhile, I hear my name.

"Yeah?"

Agumon is still looking at the watch. "What's quarter of 6 mean?"

The blue eyes inhabit the space between Agumon's seat and my seat. We sit on red circular stools in front of the bar, he to my right, and me to his left. Both of us rest our feet up against the poles underneath, hold our heads low. We stare at our arms, which relax upon the table surface.

The blue eyes belong to the bartender, a large RedVeggiemon with a tendency to gawk. More or less the reason why we don't look up. We aren't just fulfilling a drinkers' cliché.

In fact, our drinks aren't alcoholic. There's no drinking age in the Digital World, but Agumon and I alike share a disdain for the stuff. Coffee and alcohol. I never understood the attraction.

We don't speak for some time. Somehow, we still manage to interest RedVeggiemon, though.

"Warner?" Agumon glances up anxiously at the bartender and then at me in one quick motion. The bartender walks away.

I can't help thinking about that. The bartender disappears as if he is suddenly realizing that he's in plain sight. He was the cockroach to the sudden light. In this case, words. I am thinking about it for so long, with my tired eyes half-closed, that I miss half of what Agumon is talking about.

I gather the basic idea, and retort, "Your world's still relatively new, Agumon. Computers have only been in major use since the 60s."

"What's the 60s?"

"I'll get into that later."

"Oh."

I sit there, studying my pink-colored drink. "And now it's later. Let's go."

Agumon helps me off my stool, and lets me get a limping head-start so I am ahead and he is following.

Are we not war veterans? Do we count as such? We have both seen and done and fought horrible things. The battle scars prove that. The irreversible problems with our bodies prove that. Do we count?

After explaining to Agumon the function of years, dates, and eras, I ask him a question. "Do you remember when we fought Satamon?"

"Do I! We showed him!"

I quietly laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, we showed him."

I look up at the sky. Is there outer space beyond that?

"Warner?"

"Yes?"

"Didn't you have something to say?"

"Did I? I guess I was just reminiscing."

Is it just a DigiWorld, or a DigiUniverse?

"You're keeping something from me."

I spin. Agumon's turning into my analyst.

I glare, and Agumon glares back.

All of a sudden, I hear something beside my ear. Zzzzzzzzzzzzz, similar to last time. Only, now, I'm sure it isn't a Mosquitomon.

"Warner! Gimme a piggyback!"

My eyes go wide. Did we not just have an upsetting episode? What's the deal with him? I guess I can never quite predict Agumon—he'll remain youthful and innocent despite tragic happenings. Unlike me, only once innocent.

I ponder the question of whether what ensued really ensued. The last moment, I believe, we were glaring at each other. Now I am giving him a piggyback ride.

I tell ya.

Carrying this yellow individual (who goes "Wheeee!"), a thought occurs to me. "Hey, Agumon, has anything other than humans come into the DigiWorld?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, from the Real World."

Agumon is silent.

"Has any creature other than human entered the DigiWorld from the Real World?" I repeat.

"Hmmmm. Nope."

"Do you really know?"

"Hmmmm. Nope."

"You're hopeless, Agumon."

"And you're hopless!"

"Come again?"

"This piggyback is getting boring! Add some hop!"

I sigh, and begin jumping as I hold onto him.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I stop. There it is again. That sound.

"Warner, why'd you stop?"

Ignoring him, I scout the land, searching for the source of my auditory pest. Bored, Agumon begins checking his watch for the time. It is still 5:45.

"I think a mosquito made its way through."

"How's that?" said Agumon.

"It must've passed with me when the portal was open. A mosquito."

"What is it?"

"A bloodsucking burden," I reply. "It's tiny, but it's annoying, and the bites it leaves are doubly annoying."

I stood there with Agumon on my back who knows how long. By the time I am sure the thing isn't coming back, Agumon's struggling to remain comfortable. I decide to heave ho.

My halfhearted skips transform into enthusiastic glides across the acres. I feel like InuYasha carrying Kagome.

The "Wheeee!"s return, and I feel happy. Agumon grips my shoulders. He is trying to hang on, the poor guy, but at least he's having fun.

Eventually, he actually does lose his grip. Thus, for a moment he flails, arms stretched back, as his legs are dragged. I laugh, not really getting the whole picture of what is happening back there, however knowing full well that he's endeavoring to gain balance. I help him a bit by giving his body a jostle up. That way, he's able to momentarily sit up straight and make a grab. I stop laughing when I feel his claws rake my flesh.

"Fuck!" There is an immediate halt. Agumon yelps as I throw him off me to inspect what he'd done. Through the tears in my shirt, I can view claw marks crossing my right shoulder blade. A foreign color of red.

I can't help but just stare at it, dumbfounded. Then I can't help but collapse onto the ground, still staring. I feel emotions surge up, and I can't hold them down any longer.

"What the fuck's the matter with you?" I wail.

Agumon is seized by the ground. He looks as if he's about to cry.

"Ugh." I pick at the broken fabric.

Truth be told, I had brought up that event with Satamon for a reason. It was something I remembered Agumon doing. Well, Greymon. He wouldn't have recalled it because it happened while he was under control. Satamon's dark forces had turned Greymon into a black-eyed minion. It was only temporary; we eventually got him back. But for a few moments, a few terrifying moments, I saw him as a hunkering, unthinking animal. And it made me wonder, if that was the true him.

"Hey. Let me tell you something." I don't even make a move to apologize. "When I was a kid, I did a thing that… wasn't good. It's something I try hard to forget. I've never told anyone about it. Because I knew that if I did, I wouldn't be shown any forgiveness. See—damn it, why am I saying 'see'? I… I, when I was young, we had a cat. I loved him. I would snuggle up with him every moment I got. He followed me wherever I went. And I used to be jealous of him, for being a cat, for being able to simply lie around and do whatever he wanted, which was very little. To simply 'be.' I always wanted that, for humans to stop worrying about bullshit and just exist. Then one day, I realized that being an animal was a horrible thing. That cat couldn't think. He couldn't speak. That cat didn't have imagination, or logic. He didn't understand a damn thing I was saying, and only identified me by the sounds I made. He didn't love my love. He responded instinctively to my affection. I thought of him as a soulless Frankenstein walking around the house. Finally, he was on my lap—oh God, why am I saying all this all of a sudden?—and… and he scratched me. I tossed him off. Violently. Once I saw the results of what he did, I chased him. Throughout the house. Oh God, if there were any door openings, he could've escaped. I caught him, and I hit him. Repeatedly. He was making the most horrible sound I had ever heard. When my fury ran out, he was still making it. Then all I wanted to do was end it. I used my Dad's old typewriter to crush him. I had to do it twice because he survived the first try. I was blubbering when it was over, even more so knowing that that was it for him. That life. That was it for him. My cat."

_Zzzzzzzzzzzzz._

_Slap!_

"What was that?" Agumon asks.

I glance down at the remains in my hands. I smile.

"Mosquitomon."


	2. Story 2: Love

**My Agumon & Other Stories**

**Story 2: **Love

"You are more real to me than anything else in the world. Without you, I am afraid I would become particles. I would de-materialize and gravity would cease to have its hold on me and I would float into the spheres surrounding the Earth. You keep that from happening. You keep me real, for to me, you are reality. And granted, if I were to cease to exist, to die via the body, or be eradicated by the forces around us in the truest sense of erasure, you would not de-materialize, and all these people here," the Prophet gestured to the mass of cloaks, "would bear witness to your being, and I would drift in the air around them, never memorialized. My soul has been wasted by sin of age. Grant this poor old fool the sight of the beauty of your youth."

At which point two members of the cult removed the clothing of 7-year-old Ava, who, terrified, resisted little from her position upon the "altar"-a refrigerator set on its back, raised on a layer of crates, draped in satin bedsheets. A woman's hands removed her socks and jeans. A man's her shirt. He walked over the surface of the wooden boxes to face Ava with the woman and together they pressed her down and removed her panties. Ava cried. The fear mixed with embarrassment. She covered herself with tiny hands.

At the same time, the Prophet's own garment was taken off him by the ones who stood behind him. Cloak gone, he stood naked just as Ava crouched.

"The Worshippers see. The Worshippers see! She is the one we dream of. Our youthful Goddess. May I present my weak, mortal body to yours, the body untouched."

Ava saw the penis and knew exactly what it was meant for. She looked out to the crowd and wondered, Why won't any of these adults help me?

"Bless my anatomy with First Touch. Behold, Worshippers, her destiny's apotheosis."

Not one came over to her but him. She imagined backing away. Stepping off the tower and fleeing. She did not move. This place, wherever she was, was not meant for escape. Someone could rescue her, but she herself would be unable to do anything against these people. And no one would rescue her. Not in time. Ava looked at the woman who had disrobed her. She could see her face. It was a good face. She could have been a waitress who served her cheerfully at Denny's. Or a teacher. Ava made a silent plee to this face of a teacher. The woman responded. She touched the girl's hair. Wide eyes gazed up at her, followed her as she wandered behind her. The woman stroked her back with long-nailed fingers, saying, "The Prophet's need must be met for the granting of syzyrgy." She gently opened Ava's mouth, then grabbed her neck and pushed her forward.

Ava stopped crying. No savior.

Ava was found in 4 days. She was 22 miles away, in the house of Mortimer and Stephanie Nielsen, a couple notorious in their neighborhood for demonstrated Antisemitic behavior. They were the followers of Karol Troversson, a man who was guilty of his own "creepy" reputation, abnormal behavior such as late-night house projects that kept awake those who lived near him and arguments he had aloud with himself while sitting on a folding chair outside. Visits to the playground that involved eerie slow walks past the children, while he smoked and stared, elicited the notice of their parents and complaints to the police, leaving him suspect during the search for Ava. He was Ava's next-door neighbor.

Troversson's cult, calling itself "Worshippers of the Youth," was never collectively caught. The three aforementioned were tried and sentenced for Kidnapping and First Degree Sexual Assault of a Minor Child, among other felony counts, along with two other members. It was unknown at the time if this was the extent of the group, a statement Ava was not well of mind to make, and which her parents and she were to later find out was not the case.

At first, Ava's family did not move from the house that sat yards away from the site in which Ava's torturer previously hollered and drove Ava from sleep with his hammering and drilling. Ava's father could not afford it. The house itself had been a wedding present from his parents, both since passed away, having had their son late in their lives, and very old by the point in which he got married. Ava's mother also had no parents to support them; hers were lost to a case of food poisoning during her college years. Making matters worse was that Ava's mother, before the event with Troversson, had lost her job, for a reason that could not be defined to Ava at the time. Later she would come to terms with her mother's addition to alcohol.

Everything was difficult afterwards. Ava went back to school. Most of her classmates were not made aware by the elders that such a tragedy had happened to her, and none looked at the news. They simply asked her where she had been during her long absence. She told them what her parents had told her to say: "I went on vacation." Older students knew, though. The common reaction they had when they saw her was a face of panic, as they were unprepared on how to handle a little kid who had been stolen and raped. Some met with her, and gave her a gentle touch on the arm, saying, "Hi, Ava. Nice outfit. I like your hair." One big sixth-grader gave her a switchblade knife without even saying anything. Another, a $200 gift certificate for Hot Topic.

Ava saw teachers very differently. She was smart enough to realize that all of them brought goodwill when it came to her situation, however, she would always remember the long fingernails of the woman who had forced her down. The face of a teacher. If a woman has the appearance she will help you with your spelling, while beating you and helping a grown man penetrate you, any of these people can be a potential attacker. So Ava avoided adults as well as she could.

It was at this time, the DigiPortal opened. Veemon found her. Veemon took her away, from these... this... the REAL WORLD. She became digital and everything around her became digital and it was all, so, much, better. The monsters were great. And she and Veemon became partners, linked always with the Digivice, so that when she became "real" again, he would be a _deet-deet-deet_, _deet-deet-deet _away. The Digivice rested in bed with her, and remained attached to her belt during school. She confronted people with a smile and went on her way.

Before long, things turned worse again. After the incident, Ava was accustomed to being watched (as a victim, as a fascinating tragic figure). But there came a point in which she noticed she was _really_ being watched. By men and women she didn't know at all. They crept by the fence that the community had built as "protection." Obviously, they didn't know how much protection Ava really needed, because one night she was abducted again.

"Veemon, DigiVolve to... ExVeemon!"

They were in another warehouse. When Ava woke up from the drugs, she found that they had already stripped her, and that there were far more people than before. A hundred adults had gathered in cloaks. The warehouse had been decorated with items seemingly from a mansion or museum. Golden tapestries were installed along the walls. Ava lay on a stone dais, with her clothes separated on a glass table. The clothes were within reach. And so was the Digivice.

Veemon materialized. Veemon used the power of her heart to transform into something taller, deadlier. A form meant to protect her. She had her _savior _now.

The cult extended far beyond imagination-including wealthy people and people from around the nation. This knowledge proved frightening after the second abduction. It didn't end with white trash next-door neighbors. Karol Troversson was one of many. Ava's family was relocated by the government.

Years later, Ava stares out at the sea from within a lighthouse. This lighthouse she and ExVeemon visit all the time, as her father was given a job with its guardianship. Guardianship... Ava, now fourteen, looks at ExVeemon from over her arm. They are lying on their sides in the sleeping quarters by the viewing post. He has retained this body since the last encounter with the cult, and she presumes it is to always be ready to defend her. It had continued to be necessary, less here than in the Digital World, where the theme of abduction had continued. When she was young, she had been captured many a time by evil Digimon-metal Digimon, possessed Digimon, affected by the darkness. The DigiWorld had been becoming more dangerous then, and now it has been so long since they've ventured into that realm... But Ava didn't think about that. She thought about how he always rescued her in the end.

"Ava! Don't worry! I am here."

Ava became short of breath. ExVeemon drew his attention away from the window and sat up. "Ava? Are you hurt?"

She shook her head.

As dark-hearted as a Digimon could become, their design begins with goodness. Corruption happens, but if you help, they will revert to benevolent creatures. Or they become eggs, which hatch, and they are reborn. All evil purged. Humans are the ones who cannot change. She saw the sin in every one of them. Even the boys with which she journeyed the DigiWorld with, saved both Worlds with, had shown that they were little above evil.

"I love you, ExVeemon."

She brought herself up as well, and held his claws. "I love you. I don't want any human boy to touch me. I don't want any... adult... to ever be with me again."

ExVeemon's eyes, she feels, are sending signals for her. His face is hardened so, that the eyes are the only way for her to know if she is making a mistake now, confessing to him, finally.

"I want you to make love to me." She cries. "Oh God. That's all I want. Is for you to love me like I do... I-I mean... love you. You are more real to me than anything in the world. The only reason _I'm _real is because _you're _real. To me. Without you, I feel I would die and evaporate."

ExVeemon's eyes shift. Downward. He appears to be in shame.

"Do you love me? DO YOU?"

He is silent.

Ava becomes desperate. "Please... just..." She lets go of his claws and moves across the bed. She wants to feel him. Her guardian. He starts to pull away as she touches the groin. She wants to know if it will remove itself from a pouch, or if ExVeemon simply has covering over it that she has not noticed before. Ava breathes over his chest. Rubs what would be the crotch in a way she thinks pleases him.

She realizes...

There is nothing there. He has no genitalia. He is a Digimon. He is an entity consisting of bits and bytes. One that will, upon death, become an egg, hatch, and be reborn. With no use for reproduction.

Her face burns. She feels sticky and vile. She is a human. She removes her hand from below as slowwww as possible. At the same speed, Ava brings her fingers to the side of ExVeemon's face. Her jaw shudders.

She has never loved anyone as much as she loves him.


End file.
